Zionism is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel, the region of Palestine, Canaan, or the Holy Land, on the basis of a long Jewish connection and attachment to that land.
A homeland for the Jewish people is an idea rooted in Jewish history, religion, and culture. The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.
Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. Its adherents are also referred to as Dati Leumi and in Israel, they are most commonly known by the plural form of the first part of that term Datiim. The community is sometimes called כִּפָּה סְרוּגָה Kippah seruga, literally, "knitted skullcap", the typical head covering which is worn by the men.
Cultural Zionism is a strain of the concept of Zionism that values creating a Jewish state with its own secular Jewish culture and history, including language and historical roots, rather than other Zionist ideas such as political Zionism. The man considered to have founded the concept of cultural Zionism is Asher Ginsberg, better known as Ahad Ha'am. With his secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel, he confronted Theodor Herzl. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ha'am strived for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews".
Religion in Israel is manifested primarily in Judaism, the ethnic religion of the Jewish people. The State of Israel declares itself as a "Jewish and democratic state" and is the only country in the world with a Jewish-majority population. Other faiths in the country include Islam, Christianity and the religion of the Druze people. Religion plays a central role in national and civil life, and almost all Israeli citizens are automatically registered as members of the state's 14 official religious communities, which exercise control over several matters of personal status, especially marriage. These recognized communities are Orthodox Judaism, Islam, the Druze faith, the Roman, Armenian Catholic, Maronite, Greek Catholic, Syriac Catholic, Chaldean, Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic and Anglican churches, and the Baháʼí Faith.
Mercaz HaRav is a national-religious yeshiva in Jerusalem, founded in 1924 by Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Located in the city's Kiryat Moshe neighborhood, it has become the most prominent religious-Zionist yeshiva in the world and synonymous with Rabbi Kook's teachings. Many Religious Zionist educators and leaders have studied at Mercaz HaRav.
Shlomo Goren, was a Polish-born Israeli Orthodox Religious Zionist rabbi and Talmudic scholar who was considered a foremost authority on Jewish law (Halakha). Goren founded and served as the first head of the Military Rabbinate of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Subsequently, he was the third Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973 to 1983, after which he established a yeshiva in Jerusalem, which he headed until his death.
Palestinian Jews or Jewish Palestinians were the Jewish inhabitants of the Palestine region prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
Judah he-Hasid Segal ha-Levi was a Jewish preacher who led the largest organized group of Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel in the 17th and 18th centuries.
From the founding of political Zionism in the 1890s, Haredi Jewish leaders voiced objections to its secular orientation, and before the establishment of the State of Israel, the vast majority of Haredi Jews were opposed to Zionism. This was chiefly due to the concern that secular nationalism would redefine the Jewish nation from a religious community based in their alliance to God for whom adherence to religious laws were “the essence of the nation’s task, purpose, and right to exists,” to an ethnic group like any other as well as the view that it was forbidden for the Jews to re-constitute Jewish rule in the Land of Israel before the arrival of the Messiah. Those rabbis who did support Jewish resettlement in Palestine in the late 19th century had no intention to conquer Palestine and declare its independence from the rule of the Ottoman Turks, and some preferred that only observant Jews be allowed to settle there.
Hardal usually refers to the portion of the Religious Zionist Jewish community in Israel which inclines significantly toward Haredi ideology.
Neo-Zionism is a right-wing, nationalistic and religious ideology that appeared in Israel following the Six-Day War in 1967 and the capture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Neo-Zionists consider these lands part of Israel and advocate their settlement by Israeli Jews. Some advocate the transfer of Arabs not only from these areas but also from within the Green Line.
Zionism as an organized movement is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is related to Judaism and Jewish history. The Hovevei Zion, or the Lovers of Zion, were responsible for the creation of 20 new Jewish towns in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.
In world politics, Jewish state is a characterization of Israel as the nation-state and sovereign homeland of the Jewish people.
The negation of the Diaspora is a central assumption in many currents of Zionism. The concept encourages the dedication to Zionism and it is used to justify the denial of the feasibility of Jewish emancipation in the Diaspora. Life in the Diaspora would either lead to discrimination and persecution or to national decadence and assimilation. A more moderate formulation says that the Jews as a people have no future without a "spiritual center" in the Land of Israel.
The Old Yishuv were the Jewish communities of the southern Syrian provinces in the Ottoman period, up to the onset of Zionist aliyah and the consolidation of the New Yishuv by the end of World War I.
Anti-Zionism is the opposition to Zionism, the movement that sought, and ultimately succeeded in establishing a Jewish state in the region of Palestine. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, anti-Zionism evolved into opposition to the state and its policies.
The principal common goal of Zionism was to establish a homeland for the Jewish people. Zionism was produced by various philosophers representing different approaches concerning the objective and path that Zionism should follow.
Ashkenazi Jews in Israel refers to immigrants and descendants of Ashkenazi Jews, who now reside within the state of Israel, in the modern sense also referring to Israeli Jewish adherents of the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition. They number 2.8 million and constitute one of the largest Jewish ethnic divisions in Israel, in line with Mizrahi Jews and Sephardi Jews.
